Reckless Tory Cuts Are Costing The Treasury Millions

81 percent of voters aged 18-19 did not vote Tory on June 8th. Labour are now more popular than the Tories among those aged less than 47. However it wasn’t just the student vote that flocked to Corbyn. Labour saw a surge in all voters under the age of 40 years old. Those born in the age of Neo-Liberalism.

Corbyn has a unique appeal to the young voter, a long term plan for this country.

So often politicians are criticized for only caring a few years in the future. As they say, a week is a long time in politics. But the rot of short term thinking began, ironically, long ago. The selling off of public assets for short term buck at the expense of future generations. Thatcher sold of British Rail, BT, North Sea Oil, our energy companies, etc, etc. The public sector gutted to maintain low taxes and a easy life for the older generations.

And that ideology continued, under Blair with PFIs, and under Cameron and May with the Royal Mail, academies and more and more of our NHS.

An ideology that can barely see past the next budget, let alone the next election is not good for the future of this country. If the Tories want to win the votes of the young they need to show some long term economic plan. Because reckless cuts are just causing long term problems and only end costing us more and more.

I have often heard Theresa May proudly boast at Prime Minister’s questions that this Tory government has spent more than Labour planned to spend on the NHS. That should not be a boast.

We are spending all this extra money because of the cuts. Not despite them. The £1.4 billion cut in real spending to social care has only forced people into A&E. Costing us more in the long run. The effects of cutting the social care budget have been enormous. 19% of people now wait more than 4 hours to be seen at A&E. The government target is for that number is 5%. The government has sold the roof to repair the carpet. The NHS simply cannot handle the extreme workload it’s being forced to take on. In addition, the drastic cuts simply cause many NHS trust to run deficits.

Deficits run by these trusted will have to be payed off in additional government borrowing. If we budgeted properly for our NHS, it would help reduce our borrowing in the public sector. Spending more, would be spending less.

But Jeremy Hunt is not the only guilty man in the Tory cabinet. Freezing the public sector pay whilst increasing workload has created a hiring crisis. Especially in nursing and teaching. The money that could be used rewarding teachers and nurses for their hard-work is being spent on agency fees. As the government must expend more money trying to hire workers to massively underpaid jobs. We have nurses using food banks, for no real saving to the Treasury.

And the examples go on and on. The failure to build enough houses has skyrocketed the housing benefit bill. The Tories are cutting corners to save money, which in the long ends up costing the taxpayer. Investment into these sectors would truly save the government the most amount of money. It must be noted that the Tories failure to build social housing is ideological. With many party donors having shares in the real estate business it would not please them to have the market flooded by cheap state housing. In addition Nick Clegg declared in 2016 that Cameron refused to build more social housing because it would create more Labour voters.

Privatisation is another example. The most recent privatization to be made by our government was Royal Mail. Prompting Dennis Skinner’s infamous quip to Blackrod in 2013, “Royal Mail for sale, Queen’s head privatized”. The Royal Mail was sold in 2013 for £3.3bn. Shares in the company then rocketed 40% in the same day. The Mail now makes profits of over £300 million a year. The same story occurred in the sales of Lloyds and RBS, both now post profits in the billions.

Short term gain for long term loss. If we want to get our deficit down we must look towards true investment to help save the treasury money in the long term.

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